'At the end of the last century, Ann Curthoys outlined the history of ‘two distinct yet connected public and intellectual debates concerning the significance of descent, belonging and culture’ in Australia. The first revolved ‘around the cleavage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples’, and especially the issue of how to grapple with the lingering effects of past colonialisms. The second centred on immigration and the challenge migrants – particularly non-Anglo migrants – have presented to Australian society at large. Curthoys argued that in public commentary and within numerous scholarly fields, including history, these debates were kept largely separate until the 1988 Bicentenary and its celebration of multicultural Australia, which included Indigenous people amongst the country’s broader diversity. Pauline Hanson’s ascendancy to Federal Parliament in 1996 pushed these debates into ‘uneasy conversation’ with each other as her public rhetoric frequently attacked both Indigenous people and migrants from Asia as groups who, in her view, were unable to assimilate. Curthoys argued that the two debates ‘can neither be conceptualised together nor maintained as fully distinct’, but rather must be situated within an understanding of Australia as a ‘society which is colonising and decolonising at the same time’. ‘All non-Indigenous people, recent immigrants and descendants of immigrants alike’, wrote Curthoys, ‘are beneficiaries of a colonial history. We share the situation of living on someone else’s land’. (Editorial introduction)
'Between the late 1920s and early 1960s, Alekos Doukas (1900–62), a Greek migrant and writer, engaged with the widely held belief that Australia's Indigenous people were a doomed race. By focusing on letters, articles, and fictional writing by Doukas – all of which were written in Greek – this article brings together histories of migration and histories of settler colonial thinking about Aboriginal people. Although, as we show, the pessimistic racialist views he expressed in them were largely consistent with the view that Aboriginal people were in a state of racial decline, his views also shifted, we argue, under the influence of a Marxist analysis of colonialism and his fleeting encounters with Aboriginal people. Doukas' writings show how the dominant story of Aboriginal racial decline could be learnt, confirmed, revised, and at times idiosyncratically interpreted by non-Anglo migrants living in Australia.' (Publication abstract)
'Ningla A-Na is one of the most important documentaries on the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Often used as a primary source by historians, little attention has been paid to how the film emerged from a transcultural collaboration between Italian filmmaker Alessandro Cavadini and Indigenous activists. Approaching Ningla A-Na through an analysis of its production and distribution history, this article argues that the film should be understood not only as the record of a crucial time in the history of Indigenous activism, but also as an integral facet of Australia’s migration history and as a tool for transcultural activists’ engagements in the present.' (Publication abstract)
'Streten Božić arrived in Australia in 1960 with a ‘European concept’ of the country, but his outlook was transformed by the experience of living with Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. In the 1970s, he began publishing as B. Wongar and until it was revealed otherwise in 1981, he was assumed to be Indigenous. While his reputation suffered, Wongar remained committed to elucidating the ongoing colonisation of Aboriginal people. This article historicises Wongar’s work and its reception in the light of his own self-representation as a Serbian migrant uniquely positioned to sympathise with and comprehend Aboriginal Australia.' (Publication abstract)
'Cassandra Pybus’ biography is a beautifully written attempt to rescue Truganini from the enormous condescension of colonial posterity. Truganini’s life was defined by the tragedy that engulfed her people, but Pybus attempts to restore her agency, rethink the choices that she made and glimpse the world as she might have seen it. For Pybus this exercise is a ‘moral necessity’ because of her own position as a direct beneficiary of the displacement and destruction of Truganini and her community. As she writes, hauntingly, ‘these are people whose lives were extinguished to make way for mine’ (xvii).' (Introduction)
'In an attic in Somerset, fifty leather-bound books lay lost for over a century. They were found in 2015. Their discoverer was Sophie Hale and the books were diaries of her great-grandfather: the missionary and colonial bishop, Mathew Blagden Hale. Her remarkable find prompted this book.' (Introduction)
'Katharine Susannah Prichard is an iconic, larger-than-life figure in Australian literary culture who has been poorly served by biography, until now. When she was dubbed ‘the red witch’ by a journalist it was a term of disparagement, but it is deployed affectionately by Nathan Hobby. This book derives from Hobby’s 2019 PhD on the early life of Prichard at the University of Western Australia. His training in librarianship is evident in his confident handling of the material, which daunted earlier would-be biographers. The KSP collection at the National Library runs to 3.9 metres or approximately twenty-four boxes.' (Introduction)
'In the introduction to this excellent study, Toby Davidson defines his subject as ‘the curious nexus between the servants of the Muse and those of Australian democracy’, a nexus exemplified in the life and career of John Curtin (xiii). Davidson is a great-grandson of Curtin. As the author of two volumes of poetry, Beast Language (2012) and Four Oceans (2020), and a critical monograph, Christian Mysticism and Australian Poetry (2013), he is perhaps uniquely qualified to explore this topic. With this book he has produced a notable contribution to the study of Australian political rhetoric and to the history of poetry in Australia, amply and rewardingly exploring connections between them.' (Introduction)
'Many Australians know of E.W. Cole (1832–1918) from Cole's Funny Picture Book, first published in 1879 and followed by new editions, reissues and reprints into the 1990s. But the afterlife of Cole's career amounts to more than memories of childhood reading. Richard Broinowski's Under the Rainbow: The Life and Times of EW Cole takes an expansive view of Cole's life in a thorough and engaging biography which tells the story of Cole's success as a marketer and entrepreneur, and provides insights into the convictions that energised him. Prominent among these was his passionate rejection of the White Australia Policy, which found expression in pamphlets, public addresses and his three-month visit to Japan in 1903. Under the Rainbow is a strikingly handsome book with many judiciously-chosen visual images.' (Introduction)
